Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed artificial muscles that contain microbubbles and can be controlled with ultrasound. In the future, these muscles could be deployed in technical and medical settings as gripper arms, tissue patches, targeted drug delivery, or robots.

It might look like a simple material experiment at first glance, as a brief ultrasound stimulation induces a thin strip of silicone to start bending and arching. But that’s just the beginning. A team led by Daniel Ahmed, Professor of Acoustic Robotics for Life Sciences and Healthcare, has developed a new class of artificial muscles: flexible membranes that respond to ultrasound with the help of thousands of microbubbles.

The work is published in the journal Nature.